Categories: OLD Media Moves

M&A rules WSJ front page

The Wall Street Journal continues to play up M&A news. A NewsBios analysis of the Journal’s page one bylines for the first six months of the year shows Dennis Berman’s byline gracing the front page far more often than that of any his colleagues at the paper.

Berman, whose focus is mergers and acquisitions, wrote or co-wrote 20 page one stories from January through June. His next closest colleagues were Henny Sender with 13, who tracks investing for the paper, and 12 stories from Yochi J. Dreazen, who reports out of Washington on the Iraqi war and who earlier this year reported from Iraq.

(It should be noted thatÂ a number of Berman’s front-page articles involved stories related to The Journal’s takeover by News Corp.) The JournalÂ devoted considerable high-visible coverage to its own takeover saga.

Page one of the Journal remains one of the most influential corners of news real estate in the business and financial journalism profession.

Other reporters whose work was most often found on page one for the first six months of 2007 were: Sarah Ellison, media; Matthew Karnitschnig, media; Gregory Zuckerman, hedge funds and investments; Greg Jaffe, international political news; Greg Ip, economic news; Mark Whitehouse, foreign economic news; James R. Hagerty, housing; and Dionne Searcey, telecom.

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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Darrell Delamaide says:
September 14, 2007 at 10:28 am
When I was an editor at Bloomberg trying to match the Journal's scoops on M&A, we heard that Journal reporters played hardball to get these scoops. Investment bankers were told that if the Journal gets the story first, it appears on Page One. If they don't, it gets buried on p. 16. Investment bankers live to see their name in lights (that and the money), so it was a generally persuasive argument.